NEW YORK: The Shy Men

Homer Collyer and his brother Langley grew
up just before the gas chandelier, the camisole and the Prince Albert
coat vanished from the American scene. Their father was a well-known
and wealthy Manhattan gynecologist, their mother an educated woman who
read the classics aloud to them in Greek. They were fondly reared; they
were trained to be gentlemen & scholars. Homer became an admiralty
lawyer. Langley went in for engineering and developed a talent for the
piano.

But they were shy young men and showed little inclination to brave the
noisy world....